


Grasp

by Harukami



Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 23:15:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2168979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harukami/pseuds/Harukami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a little thing for Koujaku's birthday before I sleep: a small vignette about holding hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grasp

He thinks about it a lot when he's back on the mainland. He's alone, and lonely, and his body aches with the desire to have some kind of affection, any at all. The physical memory of it is the worst when he can't sleep. He lies there with his eyes closed and imagines it: the warmth of another hand, tucked tight in his. Walking home with Aoba, as they often did, chattering away about nothing, that point of connection between them. Two people sharing warmth in their touch. He clenches his hand tight and falls asleep pretending that the heat of his own fist is the feeling of another hand in his.

As time passes, the sensation seeps into other areas of his loneliness. He doesn't mean to; he's jerking off and has knotted his free hand in the sheets next to him and the feeling reminds him, suddenly, of Aoba holding his hand. It's shocking, and out of place at a moment like that, and he feels guilty as he comes. The four year gap between them makes it humiliating to have even crossed his mind. He never fantasizes Aoba's hands anywhere else, and never lets his mind wander beyond that hand in his, but even if he feels terrible even having come that close to a perversion, he can't really blame himself, either. He's so alone, and the only goodness in his life is a mother's affection; he has nothing else. Nobody to smile at, to take care of, to laugh with and cheer up. Of course at a time like this, when masturbation's just empty pleasure, when he wants to make himself feel good and forget his loneliness, he might think of the one thing he truly enjoyed. It's not even really a perversion, he thinks.

He's just so tired of being alone.

He thinks it again, too, as he sprawls on his front with pain searing his back wide open. Nothing guiltily sexual about that, at least. He's in agony and misery, being forced to have written into his skin a role he doesn't want, a life he doesn't want, with people he doesn't want to spend it with. But there's no choice. You can't cross the yakuza, and his mother needs him. So he endures, and the hand he's using to pillow his cheek is clenched on the futon as he bites his arm to keep himself centred. He holds so tight to the bed that his knuckles go numb, that his hand feels swollen and alien, and he imagines, in that foreign feeling where his fingers aren't quite his own, Aoba holding his hand. He thinks of walking Aoba home and laughing, that image that has played itself out over and over again, thinks of them holding hands together and Aoba telling him, shyly, "I won't give in to sadness. Don't give in either."

He tries not to give in. He clenches his hand around Aoba's imagined hand and promises Aoba that he won't give in.

On the last day of his tattooing, he gives in.

When he comes back to himself, it's only right to die. To go along with the mother who survived only long enough for him to be himself to see her die. He has no place in the world, and clenches his hand around the hilt of his sword, the sword he used to kill so many people. Ones he didn't care about, but were family regardless. One he loved more than the world.

His knuckles go white and he sees Aoba's face and the hilt of the sword in his hand feels foreign. Don't give in, he was told, and so he cries instead. He'll live with it, he thinks, if he can see Aoba again, if he can stop feeling so completely alone. He wants to hold his hand, stay close and warm.

But when he gets back, no matter how much he wants to make things the same, they're not. Aoba's different now. That four year gap has shrunk, and he's an adult like Koujaku. He's beautiful, and has lost the delicate trembling edge that Koujaku had wanted to protect, and he's a little standoffish in a strange way. He welcomes Koujaku back and some things _seem_ the same. They have sleepovers, and shove each other around, and tease each other.

But Koujaku is a murderer and he hides corpses behind his smile, and those years he didn't know Aoba are a huge inexplicable gap laced with an adult sensuality. It's fine, it's still Aoba. But he can't hold Aoba's hand. His own are covered with scars, the legacy of people who fought to live, and Aoba doesn't know the meaning of the scars, so it's not fair to make him touch them. He teaches his hands to be as delicate as he can imagine, spreads them on women's bodies, in women's hair. He practices not giving in. Every day, he goes out and takes sharp objects close to the necks and hair of beautiful women and he doesn't cut or hurt anyone. But he's still lonely.

Toue. Platinum Jail. Oval Tower. 

Afterward.

It takes him a week to sort through his thoughts, a week to reaffirm to himself that he isn't alone, that Aoba knows now, that Aoba understands now, that Aoba wants to hold him up like he's imagined all these years. All those times he'd imagined Aoba with him, supporting him... those times bear the fruit of reality: From now on, if he reaches out, Aoba will be there. That doesn't make confessing less intimidating. It doesn't make sex less overwhelming. It doesn't make changing the nature of their relationship less terrifying.

But it means that he can roll over onto Aoba and kiss him and make love and as pleasure takes away his mind, he's not afraid of what happens when he can't think any more; he can reach out and hold Aoba's hand, feel it tight and warm in his, and he's not alone, and he won't give in.

Aoba thinks it's charming, he's pretty sure.

He falls asleep with his hand still in Aoba's.


End file.
